If U.S. consumers are in the midst of a green revolution, the
news hasn't reached car buyers.

With the end of the recession, bigger vehicles have made a
comeback, sales figures show, and it has come at the expense of
smaller, more efficient cars.

Leading the growth were sales of midsize sport-utility vehicles,
which jumped 41 percent through the first 11 months of 2010, led by
vehicles such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Honda Pilot, each
of which get about 18 miles per gallon.

Sales of small cars, by contrast, remained flat. Sales of the
Toyota Corolla and the Honda Civic declined, and even the
fuel-sipping Toyota Prius, the hybrid darling of the eco-conscious,
dropped 1.7 percent.

"You have about 5 percent of the market that is green and committed
to fuel efficiency," said Mike Jackson, the chief executive of
AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country. "But the
other 95 percent will give up an extra 5 mpg in fuel economy for a
better cup holder."

Overall, car and light-truck purchases climbed 12 percent from
January to November, led by the consumer tilt toward SUVs and
pickups, according to recent numbers from Autodata.

The rise in SUV sales comes as the auto industry, governments
officials and advertisers have been agog this year with
environmental sentiment and boasts about the fuel efficiency of new
battery plug-in cars, such as the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan
Leaf, which recently went on sale.

General Motors ads have touted the Volt, which runs on a battery
for the first 40 miles, as "something we can all be proud
of."

Nissan has pitched the all-electric Leaf with an ad about a polar
bear displaced by global warming. It calls the car "innovation for
the planet."

And President Barack Obama, following the government rescue of GM
last year and investment in battery plants around the country, has
predicted a "new beginning" for a domestic industry that would
manufacture "the fuel-efficient cars and trucks that will carry us
towards an energy-independent future."

But building more-efficient cars and getting consumers to buy them
are different issues. Consumers' tastes are a critical factor in
determining the extent to which the nation can reduce its gasoline
consumption and, in turn, greenhouse gas emissions and dependency
on foreign oil.

In one sense, automakers have been improving fuel efficiency for
years, selling cars with ever-more-efficient engines. In fact, a
car purchased today is able to extract nearly twice as much power
from a gallon of gas as its counterpart did 25 years ago.

But those gains in efficiency have been used to build bigger cars
with more power, not save gas. The average mileage of the cars and
light trucks on the road has barely budged since 1985.

"We have the technology, but what consumers choose is another
matter," said Gloria Bergquist, a vice president with the industry
trade group Auto Alliance. "We need to get the technology out on
the road."

Brendan Bell, vehicles lobbyist for the Union of Concerned
Scientists, notes that consumers have scaled back their enthusiasm
for the very largest SUVs and that forthcoming changes in federal
fuel economy standards will force cars in all classes to be more
efficient.

"It's not like we are going back to where we were in 2007," he
said.

The most recent round of fuel economy standards, which were
announced earlier this year, will push carmakers to achieve an
average of 34 mpg by 2016 through annual improvements of about 4
percent.

Coming up for debate early next year are the rules that would set
standards through 2025, and already some environmental groups have
called for a goal of 60 mpg, an achievement that could add more
than $2,000 to the cost of a car, according to some
estimates.

But corralling U.S. drivers into more fuel-efficient cars can be
difficult, particularly because gasoline has remained off its peak
prices of 2007. When fuel prices are low, it takes longer for
consumers to get a return on their investment in fuel-saving
technologies, such as hybrids and plug-in vehicles.

This is true even when the government offers as much as $7,500 in
incentives, as it is doing for the Leaf and Volt.

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